Harker Speaker Series

The Harker Speaker Series (HSS) was launched in 2008 to bring in leaders and visionaries from a wide variety of fields to share their expertise or unique experiences with Harker parents, faculty and students as well as the greater community. For more information, contact communications@harker.org.

2018 Speaker Series

Magdalena Yeşil - Investor, Entrepreneur, Author

Wed., Nov 28, 2018 | 7-8 p.m.

Pioneering entrepreneur and investor Magdalena Yeşil came to the United States in 1976 with two suitcases and $43, blind to the challenges she would face as a woman and immigrant in Silicon Valley. Today, she is best known as the first investor and a founding board member of Salesforce, the now-multibillion dollar company that ushered in the era of cloud-based computing. Yeşil is a former general partner at U.S. Venture Partners, where she oversaw investments in more than 30 early-stage companies and served on the boards of many. A technology pioneer, Yeşil founded three of the first companies dedicated to commercializing internet access, e-commerce infrastructure and electronic payments.

Previous Speakers

Some people dream big dreams. Only a few bold adventurers live them. Author, explorer and filmmaker Denis Belliveau shared stories and images from his two-year odyssey retracing Marco Polo’s entire 25,000 mile, land-and-sea route from Venice to China and back, a journey he fully documented in the Emmy-nominated film "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo."

Brimming with adventure, history, art, and no small amount of humor, "In the Footsteps Of Marco Polo" is a deeply enriching educational experience that audiences will not soon forget. Screen the full film.

Dennis McNally — Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation and America

Dennis McNally is an author, historian, music publicist, and one of the finest cultural historians of our time. His landmark work, “Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America,” launched him, as a Ph.D. student, into a lifelong engagement with the history of American cultural freedom.

As a result of “Desolate Angel,” McNally was invited by Jerry Garcia to be the Grateful Dead’s official historian, becoming the band's publicist in 1984 during the band’s cultural renewal in the ‘80s and ‘90s. McNally went on to publish “A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead,” and “On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom,” bringing him back to his roots as a cultural historian.

Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya

The Harker Speaker Series proudly presented education activist Kakenya Ntaiya, whose childhood dream of attending college led her to an inspiring life of service and advocacy.

Toshio Tanahashi, Shojin Chef

Chef Toshio Tanahashi has been featured in Vogue Nippon, The New York Times and The Japan Times and has written two books on Shojin cuisine.

Rick Steves

Rick Steves discussed his book, "Travel as a Political Act," and talked about the ordinary people he has come across in his travels across Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, where he has learned about tolerance and cultural diversity, always seeking a fresh perspective as an American and a citizen of the world.

Khaled Hosseini with Cheryl Jennings

Khaled Hosseini, the Afghan-born best-selling author of “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns," spoke with ABC7's Cheryl Jennings about the writing process, his experiences in Afghanistan and his humanitarian efforts with the Khaled Hosseini Foundation.